The present disclosure relates to an image capturing device and an image capturing method that provide images regarding a dangerous place including a source of an accident or an incident, and an information distribution system that distributes information regarding a dangerous place obtained based on images provided from one or more image capturing devices.
The knowledge of a system for sharing information obtained by monitoring automobiles while driving among vehicles is widespread. The shared information is sometimes referred to as driving information, navigation information, or vehicle information, for example. For example, a proposal has been made of an image collection system that automatically collects images in the vicinity of an accident occurrence site (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-98105). The image collection system includes: a plurality of vehicles including a car navigation system, a impact detection section that detects the occurrence of an accident, an in-vehicle camera, and a storage section that stores an image captured by the in-vehicle camera in association with the corresponding time, and an information management center. When information regarding an accident is transmitted from a certain collision-damaged vehicle to the information management center, the information management center notifies the occurrence of the accident to the other vehicles, and obtains images captured by the in-vehicle cameras of the other vehicles.
In the above-described image collection system, images at a time when each traffic accident occurred are collected from vehicles other than a collision-damaged vehicle, and thus analysis precision of the cause of the accident is intended to be increased on the basis of the images from a plurality of viewpoints.
However, the images collected by the above-described image collection system are limited to the images captured by in-vehicle cameras. That is to say, the collected images are all limited to the viewpoints of the individual in-vehicle cameras. Thus, those images are different from the images from the viewpoints of the drivers, and pedestrians who happened to be at an accident site. Accordingly, those images are not necessarily images that are obtained from easily viewable and suitable viewpoints.
Also, the above-described image collection system basically starts processing in response to the detection of the occurrence of an accident, and collects images of a site where an accident has actually happened.